The Seven Stages of Grieving

The Queensland Theatre Company commenced their 2015 GreenHouse season with Wesley Enoch’s and Deborah Mailman’s The Seven Stages of Grieving.

Featuring an awe-inspiring performance by Chenoa Deemal, The Seven Stages of Grieving explored the timeless themes of death, loss, and grief, through the stories of Indigenous lives and suffering throughout Australia.

The show was first premiered in 1995 at Metro Arts Theatre, here in Brisbane.

Twenty years on, the play has been shaped and transformed by the many renditions and interpretations it has received across the country.

“The show has been performed, studied and kept alive through reinterpretation for two decades because it speaks of universal themes,” Wesley Enoch says.

Through the touching, and sometimes humorous performance of Chenoa Deemal, The Seven Stages of Grieving is also an ode to femininity, with it’s womanly interpretation of sorrow, combined with the joy and emotion of life.

As Enoch adds, “[The Seven Stages of Grieving] is not a one woman show, it is a show about every woman.”

While the story focuses on the grief of the Australian Indigenous people, there is also an emphasis on their desperate hope for reconciliation.

Featuring brilliant stage-effects and design elements, The Seven Stages of Grieving is a show that compels it’s audience to consider the generations of pain experienced by the Indigenous people.